THE EXILED BOERS.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 372, 25 June 1903, Page 6

THE EXILED BOERS.

•■«•>•< kr Ute DrUl.fa in puititt Vmrtm of th« World to Vxm~ i. ▼•■t Plotting. 1 A small sketch map, occupying a •orner of the Geographischer AnMiger, shows the places in Portugal and India where hundreds of the Boers captured in South Africa are ttow kept in confinement. Having distributed the prisoners from India to Bermuda it will certainly not be easy for them to plot against the British jorernment, says the New York Sun. Cronje's soldiers, the first large party to fall into the hands of the British, were landed on the island of St. Helena in April last year, •and have been liTing ever since on Deadwood Plain, as the islanders call the plateau that rises about 600 •bove the sea on one side the port of Jamestown.

Another part of the Boer army, 700 in number, marched eastward over 4*e Transvaal frontier into Portuguese territory. They were captured near stomati Poort, the gateway through Che mountains by which the railroad from Lorenzo Marques ascends to the Transvaal plateau. They were sent to Portugal at the expense of the British government, which is now paying the cost of their maintenance. Four hundred of them are confined in the citadel at Peniche, a small fortress on a peninsula jutting out into the' aea a little north of Lisbon. It is a very secluded place, the few thousand inhabitants around the citadel being devoted almost exclusively to lace making. Four hundred men are all that the storage capacity of the citadel would accommodate, and so the other 300, excepting the officers, were sent to Alcobaba, a few miles inland. Commandant Pienaar, who was in charge of the party when it surrendered, is kept a prisoner at Thomar, about 50 miles northeast of Lisbon, where still stands the famous monastery of the Knights of Christ to whom was conceded the privilege of "conquering the new world," whose deeds of prowess and rapacity both in Brazil and in the East Indies gave them an emluring and not very desirable reputation. The other officers are confined a r Cai-ias da Rein ha.

Another transport frc;.- South Africa carried GOO F.uers to Bombay, whence they were taken inland about 100 miles to Ahmednagar. Their prviviit situation does not appear to be particularly inviting* if it is proper to call Ahmednagar "a hot, waterless, pestilent hele," in which terms a correspondent of the Manchester Guardian has given his opinion of it. Another badge of prisoners has been sent to the Bermudas. It seldom happens in any war that the defeated prisoners are so widely scattered.